day 283: from spear to joy of kung fu

concepts:

• ellipses
• power
• drills
  

lessons:

• spear
• joy of kung fu
  

this Sunday was a bit of a kung fu day. the morning was the Sunday morning class, but the evening was the Joy of Kung Fu, which is an annual event gathering the local kung fu community. with this morning class we returned to spear and skipped chen pao quan--which is good, since i'm still reviewing it and need some more time to work through it.

spear (chaang)

today was the first day back to spear in some time. one of Sifu's students from CSULB showed up, and we worked together on the basic drills, with Sifu and Phunsak providing observation. Phunsak ended up spending some time with Alex to resolve some "issues" on some "finer" points of unarmed combat, but the rest of us spent the time working on spear alone.

Sifu (and Phunsak) noted that my technique was a little bit wrong in some of the drills, saying that my front hand was locking the spear shaft, when it should be more loose to allow the spear to move freely. they also noted that the path the spearpoint was tracing needed to be more of an ellipse (as opposed to a circle). in addition, Sifu noted that some of the drills that involved circular patterns weren't really, pointing out that the categories are:

• shallow crescent down, but vertically back up
• shallow semi-circle down, with shallow semi-circle back up
• full semi-circle down, with full semi-circle back up
  

in addition, Sifu noted that the intent (yi) had to be in a certain direction, so that the power was going down in each of the drills. Sifu asserted that this was so the movements were defensive, operating to knock the opponent's spear down. he also observed, however, that the movements could also be offensive, in that you knock the opponent's spear down, effectively opening a gate than allows you to raise your spear back up to go through the gate with an aggressive movement.

we finished up around 1, and then went to prepare for the evening event, which began at 4pm.

Joy of Kung Fu

the Joy of Kung Fu is a relatively recent event that began only last year. this was the 2nd annual celebration, but apparently is intended to continue and grow into the future. ostensibly, it's meant to celebrate TCMA and allow the community to come together to promote the heritage of TCMA. it does this in a festive atmosphere with a dinner and demonstrations by participating masters. Sifu went last year, and went again this year as a bit of a celebrity, since he was being interviewed by local news. in addition, he, Phunsak, and Kieun all did demonstrations.

this was a fairly large event, taking up the Rosemead Community Center with what i estimate to be around 400 people with approximately 20 masters. it was interesting to see all the demonstrations and the different TCMA instructors in the community. my suspicion is that this is still being promoted and has not yet reached everyone in the Southern California martial arts community. as a result, it probably has more room to grow and i would expect to see it continue to expand in participation in the next few years.

the local tv news covering the ceremony was NDTV, which is a Chinese (Mandarin?) language channel. they posted their report of the event (including the interview with Sifu), which you can check out:

• NDTV: http://www.ntdtv.com/xtr/b5/2010/06/14/a410200.html#video

i also took some videos, but won't post all of them up here. i will, however, post the videos of Sifu and Phunsak:

• Sifu Jason Tsou Chen Tai Chi:
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3rqjD2LhKY
  

• Phunsak Bagua Forest Palm:
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ao-XTQ-ywXg
  

i should note that Sifu was on a bit of a mission with his demonstration. the version of Chen tai chi he teaches is an older version that is not that well-known, and which has been eclipsed in public awareness by other, more popular, and more well-known versions of Chen featuring softer movements more consistent with Yang style. Sifu asserts that this has led to misperceptions and misunderstandings about some of the principles and applications in Chen tai chi--misperceptions and misunderstandings that have taken away or erased some of the original ideas and functions endemic to it.

in particular, he was frustrated by some recent comments put on the Youtube video of Phunsak doing the Chen tai chi short form. he said those comments reflect the aforementioned misperceptions and misunderstandings and shows just how widespread they have become. his demo at Joy of Kung Fu was meant to be a response to this, and he said he felt it was important to show a different voice that contrasted with prevailing viewpoints. he wanted to have everyone see his version--and to his perspective, the older version (and hence the version more consistent with the martial origins)--of Chen tai chi.

i think if he wanted to get people's attention he definitely succeeded. i noticed the room became noticeably quiet during his demo, and that some quarters of the room were in definite shock, either because they had never seen anything before similar to what they were seeing or because they didn't agree with what they were seeing. his demo of Chen tai chi (or as he later called it: "combat tai chi"), for sure, was different from any of the other versions of Chen shown this evening. i'm curious as to what they were thinking.

generally speaking, i think Joy of Kung Fu has a valuable role in connecting the local TCMA community together, providing a specific date and location around which all the masters can get together--and hence enable a forum for networking and coordination...things which i suspect just does not happen in an organized fashion in Southern California. i could see the networking happening, with a lot of people talking and catching up on news and happenings.

my caveat on this, however, is one that Kieun voiced: i'm not clear as to what is meant by "promoting" TCMA. if the goal is to promote it within the local TCMA community (i.e., help participants connect and work together), then this event is certainly doing this. but if the goal is to promote TCMA to a larger population, then i'm not so sure it has yet achieved this--Kieun made a good point: if the goal is really to promote to a larger population, then the event needs to be in a setting that is more accessible to the ordinary populace of Southern California (e.g., public spaces, like a county fair, or in Pershing Square in downtown LA, or the Pacific Grove complex in Hollywood...anyplace where people not familiar with TCMA can see it and thereby possibly be educated about it).

overall, my take is the event went well and has value. it also has potential for more. i'd definitely like to see it in the next few years to see how it's grown.